1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid body discharge device and a method for discharging a liquid body.
2. Related Art
There have been liquid discharge devices that discharge liquids such as functional liquids and ink to substrates made of glass, ceramic, resin, or silicon to form (also referred to as “draw”) predetermined patterns (also referred to as “drawing patterns”) on the substrates. One of such devices has a head in which a discharge mechanism and a circuit substrate for controlling the discharge mechanism are built. The discharge mechanism applies a pressure to a liquid body in a pressure chamber provided in a middle of a flow path through which the liquid body flows by using an electrostrictive property of a piezoelectric element or thermal energy. The liquid body to which the pressure is applied is discharged from a nozzle that is formed in the head and located at the end of the flow path. A plurality of nozzles is commonly formed as a nozzle group. The nozzles are aligned in a substantially straight line as an alignment direction with a predetermined nozzle distance (pitch).
When color filters are formed on a single substrate by drawing patterns using such a liquid body discharge device, there is a case where liquid discharged regions to which color liquids of R (red), G (green), and B (blue) are discharged, i.e., the drawing pattern of drawing regions of color pixels in a first color filter is different from that of a second color filter. In a case where a plurality of color filters corresponding to different display sizes from one another is formed on a single substrate and color pixels corresponding to R, G, and B have a rectangular shape with a longitudinal side, a drawing pattern of a first color filter differs from a drawing pattern of a second color filter. For example, the longitudinal direction of the color pixels included in one drawing pattern is orthogonal to that of the color pixels included in another drawing pattern. Since the longitudinal directions of the color pixels of the color filters are orthogonal to each other, a pitch between the color pixels adjacent each other in the first color filter is shorter than a pitch between the color pixels in the second color filter when they are viewed from the longitudinal direction of the color pixels of the second color filter. In this case, when respective color liquids are discharged from nozzles that are formed in a manner being aligned in a predetermined alignment direction in the heads so as to draw color pixels in the plurality of color filters, the following problem may occur. If the alignment direction of the nozzles is substantially in parallel with the longitudinal direction of each of the color pixels, the color pixels can be formed. In contrast, if the alignment direction of the nozzles is substantially orthogonal to the longitudinal direction of the color pixels, some pixels are not formed because the pixel pitch is short in the alignment direction of the nozzles.
To cope with such a problem, the alignment direction of the nozzles needs to be optimized in a direction based on each drawing pattern. For example, JP-A-2002-273868 discloses a technique in which the alignment direction of nozzles (a nozzle group) is rotated to an angle suitable for the pixel pitch of each color pixel to draw each color pixel.
However, in a case where the alignment direction of the nozzles is rotated as described above, the head needs to be provided with a rotating mechanism for rotating the nozzle group. Provision of the rotating mechanism causes difficulty in replacing the head since the head becomes heavy due to the weight of the rotating mechanism. In addition, the position of the nozzle group after being rotated is varied due to uneven rotations or backlashes existing in no small part of rotating mechanisms, whereby the liquid bodies can not be discharged at desired positions.